Hero Profile: Invisible Woman

Day Two of the Fantastic Four Theme Week. Today, we’re focusing on the leading lady of this series, Susan Storm aka the Invisible Woman. While Sue isn’t one of my favorite characters, I find her to be a rather generic female superhero, I will say that she does break the mold in one regard. In that she is the most powerful member of her team, as stated by the other FF members, Doctor Doom, and most anyone else who studies superpowers and superbeings. Kind of nice little change up from the usual set up, where her main role would be to be the emotional one. She still is, but it’s good they try some other things with her. That’s enough of an opener, let’s get to it.

When you see this face, brace for impact.

Susan Storm, and her brother Johnny, had a difficult start in life. Their father, Franklin Storm, was a respected doctor in New York, which was good, but then his wife died, which was bad. Mary Storm had been injured in a car accident as the two Storms were on their way to a dinner honoring Franklin. Franklin insisted on being the one to operate on his wife, why anyone allowed this I’ll never know, and she died on the table. Feeling incredibly depressed, Franklin became a drunken gambler, lost his medical practice, and then went to jail for accidentally killing a loan shark. Leaving his two, emotionally wounded children parentless. Sue did her best to stay strong during this troubled time, and became something of a mother figure for her younger brother.

While living with an aunt, Sue met Reed Richards, whom was living as a house guest of said aunt. Now, I’ve read a few different articles that talk about the age difference between Sue and Reed. Some say during this first encounter she was seventeen and he was in his mid-twenties, others state that she was thirteen while he was nineteen, and I guess the oldest stories had her be twelve when he was twenty three. To that last one, eww. But whatever the numbers, young Sue was attracted to the older Reed. And, unlike a fair number of young women at that age, she didn’t outgrow the attraction. After graduating from High School the two met up again in California, he was there for science, she was there to try to start an acting career, and they started seeing each other. She also helped fund Reed’s pet project, an interstellar spacecraft, using funds that the depressed Franklin Storm was still smart enough not to drink or gamble away. Things were going well, until the US Government pulled the bulk of Reed’s funding and shut down the project. Not one to be stopped, Reed and his friend Ben Grimm planned on breaking into the ship and taking in out on a test flight. Sue somehow convinced the super genius Reed to allow her and Johnny to join their little “unscheduled test flight.” And it was at this point that both Sue and Reed realized that Reed was wrapped around her little finger.

She can stop bullets. Which is impressive
She can also fling them back at the shooter
Which is scary.

The spaceship made it a little ways out from Earth before being bombarded with Cosmic Radiation and forced to make a crash landing. Once back on Earth, they discovered that they’d all gained superpowers, Reed stretched, Johnny burned and could fly, Ben was made of stone, and Sue could manipulate light and create force fields. Wow, the Storm siblings really were the ones that benefited most from this bit of radiation exposure. They became Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, the Thing, and Invisible Girl. Don’t worry, she changes it to Invisible Woman pretty quickly after. Their first villain was an insane former explorer now going by the name Mole Man. The stupidly named villain’s evil plan was to destroy power plants to make the world pay for shunning him and laughing at his ideas. Considering that at least one of those ideas involved the dismissed “Hollow Earth” theory, that there are essentially lost worlds beneath the surface of the Earth, I can’t exactly blame folks for laughing at his ideas. They’re able to dispatch Mole Man and then moved up to the much more serious evil-doers, the alien Skrull. They are able to defeat the shapeshifting aliens mostly by outsmarting them. For Sue, though, the most…memorable foe came in the form of Namor the Sub-Mariner. The eccentric Merman has spent years trying to convince Sue to leave Reed and be his queen under that sea. She says no, every single time, but in the beginning it was one of those “no’s” where she had to think about it for a second. Namor took the rejection well, if you consider rallying his Atlantean subjects and attacking the “surface world” well. He was also mad that Atlantis had been destroyed due to nuclear test bombs, but the rejection by Sue was the last straw. Some people…er, some fish-people. After Namor, the team started having run-ins with their most dangerous foe, Doctor Doom, who also tried to seduce Sue. Huh, megalomaniac, narcissist, despot, arrogant, loudmouthed, obsessive man, who refuses to admit his own failures, is only interested in her to make another man miserable, and was horribly burned literally by his own hubris? Yeah… good luck with Victor.

After they’d done the superhero thing for a while, Sue was pretty badly injured in a fight with Mole Man. Franklin Storm, having sobered up in the joint, escapes from prison to help save her life. He did his best to make with his kids before returning to jail, but was unfortunately kidnapped by Kl’rt, an elite warrior of the Skrulls better known as Super-Skrull. The shapeshifting alien took on Franklin’s form, and attacked the Four, hoping looking like two of the member’s dad would give him the edge in the fight. It did not. The Fantastic Four did a prisoner exchange, Kl’rt for Franklin, but the tricky Skrull had attached bomb to Franklin in an attempt to kill them. Franklin sacrificed himself to protect his kids. Good dad moment. A short time later the team fought and defeated Galactus and his herald, the Silver Surfer, and then discovered she was pregnant. She went off active team duty, being replaced by Johnny’s girlfriend Crystal, member of the Inhumans. A race of super-powered humanoids, for those just joining us. Sue’s pregnancy was complicated by her Cosmic Ray irradiated blood, so Reed and the team looked into ways to…smooth out said complications. They traveled to the extra-dimensional Negative Zone and stole a powerful device known as the Cosmic Control Rod from the dimensions despotic ruler, Annihilus. The rod did smooth things outs, and she gave birth to a boy she and Reed named Franklin. Unfortunately, Annihilus had watched the whole thing, knew that Franklin had nearly god-like power due to his parent’s irradiated condition, and planned to use the boy to takeover/destroy the world. To do so he stole back his Rod and forced Franklin’s powers to immerge in their entirety. The Four were able to stop Annihilus, but Reed took it upon himself to stop Franklin from being a threat to the world again, and essentially lobotomized him. Understandably upset that Reed had assumedly permanently damaged their son’s brain, without consulting her or seeking other options, Sue took another leave of absence, and separated from Reed. Shortly thereafter, with the help of the least likely person I can think of, Namor helps convince Sue to reconcile with Reed and rejoin the team. Franklin’s mind gets fixed later, just so ya’ll know.

Now you see her... kind of.

Over the next few years there are some bumps, she lost her and Reed’s second child due to radiation exposure, she briefly became a supervillain known as Malice, and Reed was apparently killed. After that last one Sue became the de facto leader of the Fantastic Four and was pretty darn good at it. They also recovered Reed, who’d been displaced in time, and met a universe displaced young woman named Valeria von Doom. Valeria claimed to be the child of an alternate Sue Storm and Victor von Doom. Which is only kind of true. Valeria turned out to actually be Valeria Richards, the original baby that Sue lost that Franklin had sent over to another dimension to ensure she survived, because he has godlike powers, and who is later regressed back into a baby and replaced into Sue so that Valeria can be born normally. Again, via Franklin's godlike powers. Huh… that was way more complicated than it needed to be. Even by usual comic book standards. Doom also tries to use Valeria as a trump card against the Four, but was thwarted again.

During the Superhero Civil War, Sue was originally part of the Pro-Registration side, which was more or less forcing folks with superpowers to register their abilities with the US Government. She defects after Reed and Tony Stark create a clone of Thor which goes berserk and murders Bill Foster, yet another successor to one of Hank Pym’s codenames, Goliath. She protects Captain America and his team from Not-Thor’s lightning, allowing them to escape. She and Johnny leave the Baxter Building in the dead of night, but not before leaving Reed a note, one that let him know he’s in charge of their kids and that asks him to “Please fix this.” During the final battle of the Civil War, Reed is injured taking a metaphorical bulled for Sue. You know, for someone whose main power is a force field, she gets nearly killed a lot. Sue’s granted amnesty for her actions, and she and Reed take some time off to mend a few fences. During the Secret Invasion, when the Skrull once again attempt to conquer Earth, she’s replaced by a Skrull who traps the Fantastic Four in the Negative Zone. She’s recovered after the invasion is thwarted. She is part of Reed’s Future Foundation, to honor her supposedly dead brother Johnny, who returns later. Shocking, I know. Like Reed, her career has been bumpy, to say the least.

Sue’s powers are all centered on her ability to bend light. She can mentally bend all wavelengths of light around herself, and, later, others to render them invisible to the eye and more advanced detection. She can also create invisible force fields around herself and others. She can manipulate these fields, creating large shields, or smaller spheres that she can hurl at things for some pretty destructive effects. Her fields can also be used to filter oxygen out of water. While her powers are telekinesis per se, she can use her invisible fields to manipulate objects in a manner very reminiscent of telekinesis. I can explain that better… Oh, how about this. In The Flash series, the second generation of Reverse-Flash isn’t technically a speedster. He manipulates the flow of time around him, speeding himself up and slowing everything else down. It’s not true superspeed, but works in a similar manner. Same with Sue’s manipulations. Get? Got it. Good. Moving on.

Aw... What? I'm a sucker for family moments.

The Invisible Woman has appeared in every iteration of the Fantastic Four outside the comics. Which makes sense, when you have four main members you can’t really sub out one for another as effectively as, say, the X-Men. Basically if the Fantastic Four appear, Sue is most likely going to appear in one form or another.

She appeared in a few episodes of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. She and the rest of the team are briefly seen in “The Man Who Stole Tomorrow,” where time traveling supervillain Kang the Conqueror launches an invasion of present day Earth. She has a much larger role in “The Private War of Doctor Doom” where she and visiting Avenger, Wasp, are kidnapped by Doctor Doom. They’re placed inside a machine and held hostage for the majority of the episode. We learn in the final moments, after Invisible Woman and Wasp are saved by an Avengers/Fantastic Four team up, that the machine was a scanner and that the Sue Storm inside it was in fact a Skrull imposter. We see the real Sue in “Prisoner of War,” onboard a Skrull prison ship. Unlike other people on the ship like Captain America, Mockingbird, or Viper, she’ kept in an artificial coma. This is probably due to the fact she’s the most powerful being on the ship bar none. She’s freed by the insistence of Captain America, who later pays the favor back by helping Cap escape when he was willing to sacrifice himself for the others to get away. Sue is one of over two dozen “Reserve Avengers” called in to help save the world from Galactus in the series finale.

Something new or just a rehashing of
ten years ago? Just have to wait and see.

Actress Jessica Alba portrayed Sue Storm in Fantastic Four back in 05, and as God as my witness it was an awful casting choice. Don’t get me wrong, I like Jessica Alba. She’s a fine actress. But I just can’t believe she’s a brilliant scientist. It’s just like casting Liv Tyler as Betty Ross, it just doesn’t work. Particularly during scenes like when she’s introducing the space suits that later become the FF costumes, claiming that the material “adapts to the wearers needs,” and apparently one of her needs is to have a plunging neckline. A notable difference from the comics was that Sue couldn’t render normal clothes invisible, for some reason, which necessitated Sue to strip down (twice) to get away unseen. Oh, I guess it was for that reason. Ugh, men are pigs.

Alba reprises her role in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Her role in this film is regulated mostly to the “Woman complaining about her wedding being interrupted” cliché. Oh, and because Johnny developed the ability to switch powers with any of the others via contact, we have a scene where Sue’s none-fireproof costume burns up. Just had to get Jessica Alba naked, again, didn’t you Director Tim Story? She also convinces the Silver Surfer to turn against Galactus in the films climax. So, yeah, they didn’t completely waste her character in this movie.

Invisible Woman will be appearing in Fantastic Four, the reboot, this time portrayed by Kate Mara. This version is the adopted daughter of Franklin Storm, which I was assume done to explain how she could be the sibling of Johnny when this version is being played by Michael B. Jordan, whom is Black. The idea took some getting used to, but it can work. Still, not confident in this movie at all. Has nothing to do with the cast or the effects, but the plot and behind the scene’s info. Apparently, Kate Mara intended to read issues of the Fantastic Four to help get a sense of the character, but didn’t because the Director insured her that their Fantastic Four was going to be nothing like anything in the comics. Let’s see if I can write the correct level of weary sigh that I let out whenever I’m reminded of this. SIIIIIIIGGGHHHHH. They did that kind of story already, with the Fantastic Four of ’05. It was bad. But who know, maybe I’ll be wrong about this. Just have to wait and see.

Susan Storm is a pretty standard female superhero. She’s the mother figure and emotional center of her team. Her powers do make her the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four, but she spent a good deal of time in the shadow of her much flashier brother, and extremely intelligent husband. More recent stories have tried to highlight some of the struggles she’s had with that, and with Reed’s at times emotionally distant nature. It’s an interesting sounding set up, but I don’t know, somehow it’s never really done right. For me she comes across as just pretty generic. Maybe the new film will let me see her in a different light, but as of this moment I’m not so sure. She’s the light bending, world saving, at times homemaking Invisible Woman. Next time, we talk about the other Storm Sibling, Johnny, aka Human Torch.

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